Story of WWII code talkers told at NCC-Monroe

When Native Americans were subjugated and placed on reservations in the 1800s, they were taught in white-run schools and told to speak only English.

ANDREW SCOTT

When Native Americans were subjugated and placed on reservations in the 1800s, they were taught in white-run schools and told to speak only English.

"If they were caught speaking their native tongues, they were punished by having their mouths washed out with lye soap," historian David Manuel of the Lancaster County Speakers Bureau told an audience at Northampton Community College's Tannersville campus.

"But at the start of World War II, the American government needed code languages with which its military troops could communicate strategic information by radio to each other, without the enemy being able to decipher," Manuel said. "The government found its answer in those same languages it had banned Native Americans from speaking in its reservation schools."

And that's how Native Americans, many of whom considered themselves patriotic Americans despite their treatment by those who had taken over their ancestral lands, served their country in World War II.

These Native American troops came to be known as "code talkers."

The American military first used Native American code languages, specifically those based on Cherokee and Choctaw tongues, in World War I, Manuel said.

A code language based on Comanche was used in Europe at the start of World War II, but the Nazis by then could decipher many of the code words after sending anthropologists to the U.S. to learn Native American languages.

So, the military began using a code language based on Navajo in the Pacific to fool Japanese enemy troops, who were hearing this language for the first time, Manuel said.

Philip Johnston, a World War I veteran raised by his missionary father on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, had proposed the military use such a code language.

During World War II, the military recruited a total of 450 Navajo men, only 30 of whom failed to qualify as code talkers, Manuel said.

They assigned certain words and phrases in their native tongue as code for certain things.

For example, the Navajo word for "bird" was code for "fighter plane," Navajo for "bird carrier" meant "aircraft carrier" and Navajo for "gun that squats" meant "mortar."

The code talkers also came up with multiple code words in Navajo for each letter in the alphabet and memorized those words, resulting in a total of 508 code words each man memorized.

For example, Navajo for "ant" was "A" while Navajo for "bear" was "B," providing a way to spell words out letter by letter when needed, but they could choose from any of multiple words for each letter to avoid repeating certain words and thus make the code harder to crack.

The movie, "Windtalkers," features actor Nicolas Cage as a U.S. Marine assigned to bodyguard a Navajo code talker played by Adam Beach.

Cage's character is ordered by his superiors to kill Beach's character to "protect the code" should both ever be taken alive together by the enemy.

"I've found nothing in my research suggesting any troops were ever given such orders," Manuel said.

Of the 420 code talkers who served during the war, 10 were killed in action and an 11th by friendly fire.

"Because of their similar facial features and skin complexion, Navajos were often mistaken for Japanese," Manuel said. "Some were taken prisoner by their white comrades and almost shot until white commanding officers vouched for them. On the other hand, Navajos had an advantage over many of their white comrades in knowing how to find shelter where it seemed there was none and how to hunt and skin animals for meat when military-issued rations got scarce."

One white superior officer said American troops would have been unable to take Iwo Jima, a key Japanese stronghold in the war, without the code talkers' help.

In fact, code talker Ira Hayes was among the Marines pictured taking part in the historic planting of the American flag on Iwo Jima, Manuel said.

Native American troops were ordered never to discuss their code talking duties with anyone after the war unless the government let them.

The veterans returned home and, emboldened by their wartime military service, led efforts to demand educational, employment and health care reform and small-business loans for their people.

Today, there exist the National Navajo Code Talkers Association and National Navajo Code Talkers Museum and Veterans Center, both in Arizona.